Commission aims to trim state's highway possessions

Gwyneth J. Saunders/The Sun Today Sun City resident J. Craig Forrest has been elected to serve on the South Carolina Transportation Commission, as stated on the charter perched on the shelfl in his study.

South Carolina has the fourth largest amount of state highways — 41,500 miles — and it is unsustainable.

"We need to rid ourselves of the non-functional state highways," said J. Craig Forrest. "If it doesn't perform a state function, it needs to be removed from the inventory."

Forrest is a Sun City resident who moved to South Carolina in July 2006 to retire to a nice life, "complete with beach chair, a book and a cooler watching the waves come in." He was elected Jan. 19 as vice chairman of the seven-member South Carolina Transportation Commission. He has been on the commission for a year and a half of a four-year term.

He worked in transportation planning for more than 27 years in the Maryland Department of Transportation and then for Baltimore County. After 44 years in Maryland, the Forrests sold their snowblower and moved south.

"Somehow life got turned around," he said. "I've been in transportation my whole life. It's something I enjoy. I was asked to participate with the Lowcountry Regional Transportation Authority, the organization the operates the Palmetto Breeze, and I became chair. I still had my hand in transportation."

Then a friend read a notice in a newspaper about openings on the commission and suggested Forrest apply.

"I resisted for quite a while," he said. "I finally said yes and then the application arrived. It was almost a PhD dissertation and it nearly ended right there."

About the commission

The commission is elected by the state senators and representatives who make up the 2nd Congressional District. It is the policy-making arm of the SCDOT.

"The biggest thing the commission does is we actually adopt the SCDOT budget. We're responsible to the secretary of transportation for the overall direction of maintenance and repairs," Forrest said. "We're responsible for developing long-range state transportation requirements and getting federal grants."

The current transportation budget is $1.2 billion and, Forrest said, an additional $1.5 billion is needed to maintain all the roads that fall under the state highway umbrella.

"There is tremendous need in the state as to maintenance and system preservation," he said. "We're not going to tell the governor to raise taxes. Our job is to give a realistic approach as to what the needs are and provide a list of revenue streams that we feel are a menu of opportunities. The governor and the legislators can decide what and if they want to do something with the list."

Working with the LRTA

As a board member, vice chair and chair of the Lowcountry Regional Transportation Authority (LRTA), Forrest was involved in many aspects of the organization. Among those with whom he worked closely was Rochelle Ferguson, executive director of the Palmetto Breeze.

“I would say he has a vast knowledge of transit and transportation planning. His work experience concerned a lot of highway involvement. He strikes me as person who has always worked hard all his life and that doesn’t change once you retire,” Ferguson said.

Forrest was very involved as a board member and brought a lot of new ideas to the agency, working to be involved in the community and tried to bring about various changes in the organization, she said.

“One area was the strategic planning efforts of the LRTA — setting the goals and objectives of the organization both short and long-term. I think that’s truly something that every organization needs,” said Ferguson, “and the South Carolina Department of Transportation certainly follows that type of organizational style with goals and objectives.

“It was a pleasure to work with him. He is wonderful, he continues to make a concerted effort to stay in touch with us and provide us with information about what is going on across the state of South Carolina.”

About the roads

State roads fall into several levels of hierarchy: Primary, secondary, collectors and local roads.

Primary roads carry large volumes of traffic. Secondary roads are used to support neighborhoods and carry traffic between primary arteries. Collectors take traffic from neighborhoods and feed them into the secondaries. Finally, there are the local roads — the ones that take residents from their homes and driveways to the collectors and out into the world.

Then there are the roads that are labeled as state roads but don’t seem to match the criteria, such as the Simmonsville (SSR 474), Buck Island (SSR 29), Palmetto Bluff (SSR 35) and the Purrysburg-Levy roads (SSR 34). The disparity is great in the levels of service provided by South Carolina's state roads.

Weeding out the wheat from the chaff and making recommendations for the future is what Forrest and his colleagues will do as they continue to examine the state's current highway responsibilities.

"The needs are dire and the opportunity to address them is now," Forrest said.

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